50 Random Fun Facts

1. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, was the first owner of the phone number 888-888-8888. Unfortunately, he found it unusable since he received more than a hundred phone calls per day from kids playing with phones.

2. FORTY is the only number in the English language which letters are in alphabetical order. In Spanish, the only number with the same property is DOS (two).

3. The Irish novelist James Joyce remarked that cuspidor is the most beautiful English word.

4. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same date and year — February 12, 1809.

5. Upon tasting a sip of champagne for the first time, it was said that Dom Pérignon remarked, “Come quickly! I am tasting stars!” However, Rod Phillips argued in A Short History of Wine (2002) that there’s no real evidence that he said that and the quotation first appeared in an advertisement during the latter part of the 19th century.

6. The French for walkie-talkie is talkie-walkie.

7. The most frequently used English letters, in order, are ETAOIN SHRDLU. This can be anagrammed to SOUTH IRELAND.

8. The first registered domain is symbolics.com (registered on March 15, 1985).

9. Facetious is the shortest English word which contains all the vowels in ascending alphabetical order.

10. Subcontinental contains all the vowels in descending alphabetical order.

11. On July 14, 1789, the day of the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI’s diary entry was, “Nothing.”

12. The USC’s film school had rejected Steven Spielberg’s application for three times.

13. The oldest koi (named Hanako) on record lived for 226 years.

14. Unlike most members of the cat family, the Turkish Van Cats enjoy playing with water. Due to their fascination with water, they have been also called the “swimming cats”.

15. (1, 22, 41, 58): Any three of them add up to a perfect square.

16. The license plate number of Donald Duck’s car is 313.

17. What is the world’s largest desert? Sahara, right? It’s actually Antarctica.

18. Ferdinand Lop, who ran for president during the fourth French Republic, promised to eliminate poverty after 10 PM. He lost.

19. “NINETEEN AND TWO HALVES” contains 20 letters

20. Not many would be surprised by this one: Sloths have the slowest rate of metabolism of all animals.

21. 1.2096 seconds is approximately equal to 1 microfortnight.

22. Def Leppard got its name from Joe Elliot’s drawing of a leopard with no ears.

23. In 240 BC, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth to be approximately 44,100 km. Today’s accepted value is approximately 40,075 km.

24. The study of beer and beer-making is called zythology.

25. There is a Japanese word for “death from overwork” — Karōshi (過労死).

26. Former Vatican chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth once said that doing yoga is Satanic. “It leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” he said.

27. What is the scientific name of the Earth’s moon? You guessed it, the “Moon”.

28. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) was the first American film that showed a toilet being flushed.

29. In Portugal, it is considered offensive to write in red ink especially in official documents.

30. Industrialist Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Niles, Illinois which was completed in 1934. The tower was named the “Leaning Tower of Niles”.

31. A pipe with a radius of 2 will have four times more fluid to pass through it than a pipe with a radius of 1. This is because that the volume of a pipe is directly related to the square of its radius.

32. The official motto of the United States, “In God We Trust,” was only adopted in 1956.

33. Table can mean either “to present for consideration” and “to remove from consideration.”

34. The most expensive item sold on eBay was the Gigayahct, a luxury yacht designed by Frank Mulder. It was sold for $168 million.

35. The multi-vocal part in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody took 84 hours to complete recording.

36. A hummingbird beats its wings 80 times per second during normal flight and it can increase it to 200 times per second during a courtship dive.

37. Upon their return from the Moon, the crews of Apollo 11 had to go through US Customs.

38. A jellyfish is made of 95 percent of water.

39. James K. Polk (11th US president) and Warren G. Harding (29th US president) were born on the same date — November 2. They were born 70 years apart (Polk – 1795 and Harding 1865).

40. Fred Yannantuono’s palindrome on “How rumors spread”:

“Idiot to idiot to idiot to idiot to idiot to idi …”

41. The amount of water contained in an inch of rain is approximately equal to the water in 10 inches of snow.

42. Oh, my! Over 70 percent of all the lawyers in the world live in the United States.

43. Art was one of the official competitions in Olympics between 1912 and 1948. The events include music, architecture, sculpture, and painting.

44. When the first telephone service was established in 1878, people said “ahoy” instead of “hello” when answering the phone.

45. The European affiliate of PETA wrote to Pet Shop Boys asking them to change their name to “Rescue Shelter Boys”.

46. Anatidaephobia is the fear of being constantly watched by a duck.

47. “Put a pillow on your fridge day” is celebrated on May 29.

48. In all the James Bond movies, Sean Connery wore a toupee. He started losing his hair at 21.

49. 32 + 42 = 52 and 33 + 43 + 53 = 63.

50. In 1977, Ken Olsen, president of Digital Equipment Corporation, stated, “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”

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My name Edmark M. Law. I work as a freelance writer, mainly writing about science and mathematics. I am an ardent hobbyist. I like to read, solve puzzles, play chess, make origami and play basketball. In addition, I dabble in magic, particularly card magic and other sleight-of-hand type magic. I live in Hong Kong.
You can find me on Twitter` and Facebook. My email is edmarklaw@learnfunfacts.com

RE: 47. “Put a pillow on your fridge day” is celebrated on May 29.
I suspect that it isn’t, really.
Unless there are a lot of people who want to dust the top of the fridge, and lack dustrags. Or folks who ardently desire a dusty pillow? For them, oh boy! Party time.
🙂

the fourtiest is actually saying when it all began, for me at least (and for so many of you). Thank you for that fact, I needed desperately to know that. Sometimes, things have hidden truth, even if it’s just random for everyone else. 😀

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Learn Fun Facts is an archive of curious facts for the curious. I write on a variety of subjects, including mathematics, science, technology, language, history, literature, art and anything in between.